


Wm^Sim^^ 



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THE PEOFESSIONS: 



AN OEATION, 



DELIVERED BEFORE THE 



LITERARY SOCIETIES 



iHat0()all College, 



MERCERSBURG, PENNSYLVANIA, 



AT THEIR ANNIVERSARY. SEPTEMBER 27. 1812. 



BY GEORGE W. BTTEWAP. 



MHO 



BALTIMORE: 
PRINTED BY JOHN MURPHY, 

146 MARKET STREET. 



'9^l»-^^ 






THE PROFESSIONS: 



AN ORATION, 



DELIVERED BEFORE THE 



LITERARY SOCIETIES 



i7 



4War0l)all College, 

ERCERSBURG, PENNSYLVANIA, 

iT TMIB ANNITEESlEf, SEPTEMBER 2?, 1812. 

BY GEORGE W. BURNAP, 



BALTIMORE: 
PRINTED BY JOHN MURPHY, 

146 MARKET STREET. 



! S41 



vV 



m 



Marshall College, Sept. 27th, 1842. 
Worthy Sir: 

Permit us in behalf of the respective Societies we represent, to 
tender you our unfeigned thanks for the very pertinent and excellent Address 
with which you favored us this afternoon, and to request a copy of the same for 
publication. 

Yours, veiy truly, 

I. Edgar Moore, 
N. S. Strassburger, 

H. D. MOTTER, 

Committee of the Diagnothian L. Society. 
A. J. W. R. Hudson, 

H. HOCKERMAN, 
P. SWIGERT, 

Committee of the Goethean L. Society. 
Rev. G. W. BuRNAP. 



Mercersburg, Sept. 28, 1842. 
Gentleme7i, 

I am happy to recognize in your request of this morning, a testimony 
that you found in my address of yesterday some sentiments not inappropriate 
to your pursuits as students and as candidates for the liberal professions. In 
giving my assent to the publication you ask, I cannot neglect this opportunity 
of expressing the gratification I have received in my visit to Marshall College, 
and the village of Mercersburg. 

I am, gentlemen, with much respect. 

Yours, 

G. W. BuRNAP. 

Messrs. Moore, Hudson, ' 

Strassburger, Hockerman, 
Motteb, Swigert. 



E A T I N. 



Gentlemen : 

In obedience to your call, I appear before you 
to-day, to offer my contribution to the entertainment 
of your literary festival. The sight of these acade- 
mic walls, the manifest enthusiasm of so many young 
men looking forth from these walks of study and 
accomplishment upon the world, where they hope to 
reap honor and success, most vividly recall to my 
memory the emotions, which at the most susceptible 
period of life were roused in my bosom, when from 
the midst of embowering trees the spires of a Uni- 
versity first rose upon my sight. There had trod the 
good and the great of former generations. There 
they had amassed those treasures and formed those 
habits of honorable exertion, all unconsciously it is 
true, which made them the lights of the succeeding 
age. The same path is open to all, and ignorance of 
the future, of which w^e so much complain, then at 
least stands our friend, inasmuch as it opens to all 
the boundlessness of hope. The scenes of that most 
interesting and eventful period of life were passed 
through, with its various alternations of success and 



b ORATION. 

defeat,, and now at the distance of fifteen years, I 
come back from that world, which you are so soon to 
enter, to offer you the counsels which the lessons of 
those fifteen years have taught me. 

The subject, which I am to present to your consid- 
eration on this occasion, is the appropriate education 
and the peculiar duties and responsibilities of profes- 
sional men in America. I have chosen this subject 
as most interesting to young men, the object of whose 
residence here is, in most cases, to fit themselves for 
some sphere of professional life. 

It is not necessary, I take it for granted, to prove 
to such an audience as this, that the professional men 
of America exert, as a class, the most controlling 
influence over its destiny. It is so from the stern 
republicanism of our institutions, which has decreed 
the total absence of every thing like hereditary castes 
in society. In other countries, by the institutions 
which secure to a few a larger division of property, 
and the hereditary right of legislation, a class is 
created which from position alone exerts a controlling 
sway over the masses. Few though they be in num- 
bers, they contrive to monopolize nearly the whole 
power to themselves. Pride prompts them, and 
wealth enables them, to obtain the most finished 
education that their natural indolence will allow. 
Their manners have the irresistible sway of fashion, 



ORATION. 7 

and their opinions and prejudices have a currency, 
of which in a republican country it is impossible to 
conceive. Original talent and professional eminence 
are overshadowed and overborne by the hereditary 
aristocracy, lose their independence, and are led to 
cultivate those arts and habits, which will make them 
acceptable to the few, rather than form that charac- 
ter which will enable them to win the respect and 
guide the destiny of the masses. Here, in this land 
of absolute freedom, native talent and laudable ambi- 
tion have no such impediment in their path. Every 
man has precisely that amount of influence to which 
he is entitled by his capacities, his education, his cha- 
racter and position. The members of the professions 
necessarily exert the widest influence, not because 
their original endowments are greater, nor because 
they are disposed to usurp a control not readily con- 
ceded by the community to which they belong, but 
because devoting themselves to the acquisition of 
knowledge, and the cultivation of the intellectual 
powers, the position they assume in society, and their 
extensive intercourse with their fellow men, enable 
them to act on wider circles, and with greater force 
than any other class. Such being the case, it is of 
the highest importance that they should receive the 
best education which the country can afford. And, 
paradoxical as it may seem, I believe they do receive 



ORATION. 



as good an education, that is, as well calculated to 
attain its objects, as the profe.ssional men of any other 
country. I mean of course, those who are educated 
at all. This leads me to speak of the ends and 
objects of a liberal education. 

I count it no small part of the advantages of our 
condition, as a new and original people, that our lite- 
rary institutions are the native offspring of the soil, 
and not offshoots from the antiquated stocks of Euro- 
pean institutions. They have grown out of the wants 
of the people, and are therefore calculated to meet 
those wants. They are swathed and cramped by 
none of those outworn forms and prejudices which 
mar and disable similar institutions in the old 
world. There, the scholastic usages of the middle 
ages still linger, and consume the most precious years 
of life^ and exhaust the energies of the mind in learn- 
ing what after all is almost entirely useless. There, is 
still committed the egregious folly of pursuing educa- 
tion as an end instead of a means. There, years are 
sacrificed to gain the useless accomplishment of being 
able to dispute in Latin, or the still more useless 
faculty of writing that language with the elegance 
of Cicero. As well might a man practise with bow 
and arrows in order to gain expertness in the use of 
fire-arms. With them, across the Atlantic, he is a 
great man at college who has gained a given quantum 



ORATION, 



of dry mathematical knowledge, while perhaps in 
obtaining it his mental vision has become so contract- 
ed that he is incapable of observing either man or 
nature. Hence, there is with them a thing utterly- 
unknown among us, a generation of mere scholars, 
mere abstractions in the world, men who know Greek 
and Latin and mathematics and nothing else — Do- 
minie Sampsons, who can tell you all the minutiae of 
the Attic and Ionic dialects, and solve any problem 
in the differential calculus, and at the same time can 
hardly tell you whether they have on the same clothes 
they wore yesterday, and when pushed out into the 
world, are found as helpless, except in their peculiar 
province, as a man from the moon dropt suddenly 
among sublunary beings. From these great follies, 
thanks to our"youth and ignorance of the past, we are 
happily delivered. 

The rigid utilitarianism of our countrymen inquires, 
what are these things worth ? The public, on whom 
the professional man is to act, speak the English 
and not the Latin language. His power over them 
will depend on his skill in the English and not the 
Latin tongue. Common sense then dictates, that the 
ancient languages are to be pursued as a means and 
not an end ; either for the knowledge that is locked 
up in them, or the discipline which their study affords 
to the mind, or for the entire mastery which the 
2 



10 ORATION. 

acquisition of a foreign language compels us to obtain 
of the whole compass of our. own. 

For these purposes I yield to no man in my esteem 
for the ancient languages. My advice to the young 
student would be that of Horace to the Pisos : 

Vos exemplaria Grseca 
Nocturna versate manu, versate diurna. 

Let classic authors be your chief delight, 
Read them by day — read them again by night. 

It is only by grappling with those intellectual giants, 
those Titans of earth, of which she produces only 
two or three in a century, that the mind can grow to 
strength and greatness. But I think our colleges 
judge wisely in forbearing to exact from their pupils, 
at the expense of a large portion of the most precious 
part of life, such useless accomplishments as making 
Greek and Latin verses. 

Just so it is with mathematics and metaphysics. 
Their legitimate office is to discipline and strengthen 
the intellectual powers. For this purpose they are 
invaluable. Indeed they are indispensable to a tho- 
rough education. Yet the actual knowledge they 
communicate, does not often find employment in after 
life. No theory of metaphysics, which has ever 
been contrived, has commanded universal assent, or 
promised 4o be satisfactory to coming ages. Human 



ORATION. 11 

language, which is the instrument of metaphysical 
discussion, is inadequate to grasp, define and express, 
the nature, the functions, and the faculties of the 
human soul, running into each other as they do, like 
the colors of the rainbow. As well might you think 
with chain and staff to measure and mete out the 
unfathomable depths and heaving plains of ocean. 
Different minds make different divisions, accommodat- 
ed rather to the nomenclature which they happen 
to adopt, than the real phenomena of our spiritual 
nature. Each successive theorist, with another no- 
menclature, obliterates the old distinctions and makes 
new ones of his own, again to be superseded by the 
next inquirer. 

Those who pursue either of these studies as a pas- 
sion or an accomplishment, do not thereby give pro- 
mise of excellence as practical men. It would seem 
by the arrangement of nature, that the powers which 
these studies call into exercise should be the last to be 
cultivated, and should be postponed till the perceptive 
faculties are well developed and well disciplined. 
Those who prematurely turn the intellectual eye from 
the observation of the outward to that of the inward 
world, are more likely to dwarf the mind than expand 
its powers and perfect its faculties. The fact is, that 
our country asks for scholars, not scholastics, men 
whose minds have been strengthened, not over- 



12 ORATION. 

whelmed and enfeebled by learning; men who are 
not accoutred in the mere finery of a militia review, 
but disciplined to the skill and efficiency of the trained 
soldier; — men whose tastes have been refined to the 
appreciation of all that is exquisite in literature, 
without being made too fastidious for the homely 
affairs of common life. Our countrymen are prepared 
to welcome into the walks of public life, and into the 
circles of private intimacy, a truly liberal, enlightened 
and enlarged mind. They feel in it a substantial ac- 
cession of strength and enjoyment. Such men ought 
it to be the ambition of our colleges to form and send 
forth into the world; and when they do so, they 
accomplish the very purpose of their existence. They 
thus become the choicest blevssings of God to a free 
people. They are the perennial fountains, the streams 
whereof make glad the city of our God. It is to her 
two universities, and to the constant efflux of know- 
ledge, which for five hundred years has continually 
been pouring forth from them, and overspreading the 
whole land, that England may attribute, more than to 
any other cause, her supremacy among the nations. 
Her destinies for centuries have been under the control 
of statesmen, trained at those seats of learning and sci- 
ence, to that massive wisdom, which can result only 
from the union of sound education and wide expe- 
rience. The guardians of her youth and the minis- 



ORATION. 13 

ters at her altars have drank deeply at the same 
fountains, and thus carried the vital influence of those 
venerable institutions to every village and hamlet 
over the whole island. Thus it is that England has 
become the wonder of the world, clarum et venera- 
bile nomen gentibus. 

Let us then suppose the young man accomplished 
with that practical education which our colleges are 
so well calculated to give, and to have chosen the 
profession of the law — what are the prospects which 
in this country open before him ? What is the rela- 
tion which he is to sustain to society? what are his 
social duties ? and what are the dangers to which he 
is exposed ? 

I do not deny that there is a strong prejudice ex- 
isting in this country against the profession of the 
law. It is often spoken of as a needless and un- 
healthy excrescence of the body politic, itself a 
greater evil than those which it pretends to cure. 
On the individual, its influence is thought to be still 
more pernicious. It is thought to chili the heart, 
narrow the understanding and corrupt the moral 
faculties. The lawyer is thought to live by the 
moral obliquities of his fellow-citizens, and to be 
engaged by the strong force of interest in fomenting 
the social evils which afflict mankind. The inference 



14 ORATION. 

from all this would seem to be, that the lawyer is by 
profession, a bad member of society. 

But is not this, let me ask, an illiberal and unjust 
view of the profession 1 Is not this visiting upon 
the whole, the misconduct of a few? Is it just for 
men to cast the blame of their own evil passions on 
the mere instruments they use to wreak them upon 
their fellow-men ? Were these same men who cast 
the censure what they should be, the very profession 
which they declaim against would be deprived of the 
power of doing mischief 

I do not deny that it is in the power of any man, 
who devotes himself to the law, to realize the worst 
conceptions that have ever been formed of the pro- 
fession. He may enter it with low ideas of its dig- 
nity and its duties. He may regard the law, not as 
a peaceful remedy for social ills, but as the means of 
turning the collisions of interest and the ebullitions of 
passion to the advantage of the selfish and unprinci- 
pled. He may regard its professors as not linked 
into the common brotherhood of humanity, not bound 
to aid their fellows in the struggles of life, but privi- 
leged to live like beasts or rather insects of prey, 
upon the weak and defenceless. He may think that 
it is allowable for him to spread the meshes of the 
law in some dark corner, and there like some bloated 
spider sit and watch the entrance of the unwary as 



ORATION. 15 

his legitimate prey. Such unworthy members, I 
grant, merit all the reproach which has ever been 
cast upon the profession. 

But notwithstanding all these prejudices, the law, 
in itself considered, is a noble and an elevated pur- 
suit. It is the triumph of civilization. It is the 
enthronement of reason and justice in the place of 
passion and violence in the intercourse of mankind. 
It is the best remedy which man can provide for the 
imperfections of his nature; itself imperfect only 
because it shares the common imperfection, which is 
inseparable from all human things. Legal tribunals 
have existed wherever man has attained to a state of 
civilization. Infinite Wisdom saw, that revealed 
religion itself could not subsist unless sustained by 
civil institutions, and the same prophet, who from the 
solitudes of Sinai proclaimed to all ages the eternal 
truths of religion, was commissioned likewise to pre- 
scribe for a nation the municipal laws, which should 
regulate all their social relations. 

The profession of the law then, grows out of the 
necessities of man in society. It is impossible for so- 
ciety to exist without laws, and it is natural that their 
interpretation should grow into a profession. Men, so 
long as they maintain the intercourse of business, 
will differ as to their rights and duties. Blinded by 
interest and passion, they will diverge more and 



16 ORATION. 

more, instead of approaching an agreement. Some 
third party then must come in to adjust their difficul- 
ties. The decisions of that third party naturally 
grow into precedents, to be referred to in future con- 
troversies. Hence law would grow up, and the pro- 
fession of the law, without any special enactments ; 
and the principle of the division of labor, if nothing 
else, would appropriate the business of settling dis- 
putes to a particular class of men. 

The profession of the law then, being necessary 
to the existence of civilized society, may be entered 
on with the most honorable motives and the purest 
intentions. Its true end is justice, not wrong. The 
guilty must be defended, not indeed that he may es- 
cape, but that the bounds of justice may not be 
exceeded in his punishment. The merits of the 
wrong side, as well as the right, must be brought 
forward, not only because it is difficult to find a case in 
which the right is all on one side, but lest the penalty 
should be disproportioned to the offence. The de- 
fender of the side that is on the whole wrong, does 
not necessarily task his ingenuity to make the worse 
appear the better reason, but only to make the wrong 
appear no worse than it really is. 

And though every benevolent mind must look with 
sorrow at the immense expense, and often ruinous 
consequences of law-suits, there is this consolation 



ORATION. 17 

about them, that the litigants are martyrs as well as 
victims, the means of keeping alive the forms of jus- 
tice and a knowledge of social rights, — the sacrifices 
which from time to time are thrown into the gulf of 
ruin for the salvation of the state. 

Is it objected that the profession of the law has a 
tendency to blunt the moral sensibilities? That po- 
sition I utterly deny. The distinctions of the law do 
not kill or paralyze the moral faculties. On the con- 
trary, no man knows better what is morally right 
than the lawyer. No man perceives more keenly 
than he the point where legal award diverges from 
absolute rectitude, and if he sins and makes himself 
the instrument of wrong, no human being is more 
sensible of his guilt, for no man sins against greater 
light. The unprincipled lawyer, it follows from this, 
must be a self-condemned and a wretched man. 

To the intellectual man the study and practice of 
the law is the most propitious pursuit. Nothing could 
be devised more calculated to secure a complete 
intellectual development. What does the scholar 
want to round the full circle of human attainment, 
but the knowledge of men and things superadded to 
literary and scientific accomplishment? This know- 
ledge of men and things is the necessary consequence 
of the practice of the law. The habit too of public 
speaking, which this profession involves, gives the law- 
3 



18 ORATION. 

yer the power of wielding at will whatever knowledge 
he may have amassed, and advances him to the high- 
est point of social influence. If he add to these intel- 
lectual accomplishments, that moral worth which 
commands the confidence of his fellow-citizens, the 
lawyer assumes the most commanding position in 
society. He becomes a radiating point of intellectual 
light, and his daily conversation widely influences 
the opinions and the conduct of those around him ; 
and in this country, in the absence of all other title 
to command than that which every man bears in his 
intellectual and moral attainments, he wields the 
most important power in the state. 

Hence it is, that the profession of the law leads so 
directly into the arena of politics. The lawyer be- 
comes the political leader simply because he is gene- 
rally better qualified than any other individual to as- 
sume that position. His extensive intercourse with his 
fellow-citizens enables him to know more of the inte- 
rests of the community to which he belongs than any 
other man, and his education and pursuits give him a 
wider acquaintance with the condition of public afiairs. 
Business habits and the discipline of public speaking, 
fit him better than any other man to represent a con- 
stituency in the legislative assembly. If he has 
maintained, as he ought, the studious habits of early 
life, there have been some hours of the busiest week 



ORATION. 19 

kept sacred to the delights of classical literature and 
philosophical investigation. He does not forget that 
Bacon and Hale, Sir Wm. Jones and Lord Brougham, 
were laborious lawyers as well as philosophers and 
literary men, and the lightest effort that ever fell from 
their pens was all the more valuable from the fact, 
that it combined the wisdom of experience with the 
exquisite polish of literary beauty. He remembers 
that many of the fathers of our republic were law- 
yers, those minds which have exerted the most con- 
trolling influence over its destiny were trained to the 
bar — Jefferson, and Adams, and Hamilton, and Mad- 
ison, and in our own times, the second Adams, Web- 
ster, Calhoun and Clay, whose wisdom and eloquence 
have travelled as far as the accents of our mother 
tongue, and awaken the thrill of patriotism and lib- 
erty in the bosoms of the sons of freedom from the 
equator to either pole. 

No career of honorable ambition was ever pre- 
sented to the mind of man, not even in the republics 
of Greece and Rome, more glorious than is opened to 
the young lawyer by the free institutions of our vast 
and growing country. 

Not a few, it is to be presumed, of those whom I 
now address, have already chosen the law as the 
pursuit of your lives. I have spoken in vain if I have 
failed to persuade you that it is not that narrow, 



20 ORATION. 

selfish, cold-blooded profession, which it is too often 
considered by the world, at least not necessarily so. 
You, I hope, are resolved that in becoming lawyers 
you will not cease to be men, that you will never 
suffer its dry technicalities to wean you from the 
study and admiration of elegant and classical litera- 
ture, nor its practical imperfections to induce you to 
lose sight of the great principles of truth, integrity 
and honor. Above all, scorn the mean arts of the 
demagogue and the politician. And if your country 
calls you to serve her in the sphere of political life, 
enter upon it with the pure and lofty principles of a 
statesman, a patriot and an honest man. 

Others of you have chosen to devote your lives to 
the study and the practice of the healing art. To 
the physician, though in another way, the same re- 
sponsibility attaches of being a public man. The 
good or evil he does is by no means confined to the 
diseases he cures or aggravates. His action is not 
restricted to the mortal part of his patients. By his 
daily intercourse he acts morally and intellectually 
on multitudes, and either alleviates or confirms their 
moral and intellectual maladies. Of the duty of 
making yourselves thoroughly acquainted with all 
that can be known of medical science, I shall here 
say nothing. A wise regard to your own comfort in 
after life will prompt you to do this. There will be 



ORATION. 21 

exigencies in your future experience, when nothing 
but this can save you from the most bitter and ago- 
nizing self-reproach. There will be times when you 
will be brought to grapple with disease in its most 
appalling forms, when the anxious eyes of the suffer- 
ing patient, and the beseeching looks of surrounding 
affection will be turned on you. No tongue can tell 
the anguish of that moment, if you cannot return that 
gaze with the full consciousness that you have done 
all that man could do, to prepare yourself to meet 
the exigencies of such a crisis. 

But it is not of mere professional skill that I now 
speak. I speak of the qualities of mind and heart, 
which ought ever to accompany the skill of the phy- 
sician. Doubly is he a physician, who is likewise a 
wise and good man. If he be such a man, such is his 
access to the intimacy of the domestic circle, such 
the nearness of his approach to the heart when it is 
softened by suffering or sorrow, that a few years 
establishes him as the endeared friend as well as the 
medical adviser of the family. In this capacity no 
human accomplishment will be lost. He will have 
opportunities to probe and heal domestic wounds 
which have rankled in secret for years, and caused 
perhaps more unhappiness than any bodily malady. 
No stores of accurate and extensive information will 
be useless. Eloquence even will be as useful to the 



22 ORATION. 

physician in his daily walks, as it is at the bar or in 
the pulpit. His audiences, it is true, are not so large, 
but he meets them more frequently, and they listen 
to him with greater confidence and less reserve. 

This union of social influence with professional 
skill is by no means impossible ; nor is classical and 
literary accomplishment by any means excluded by 
a successful practice of the healing art. It is gene- 
rally found, I believe, that he, who finds time to study 
his cases most thoroughly, will also create opportu- 
nities to keep alive that general culture, which is. 
after all the legitimate solace of professional life. 
Science and literature should ever walk hand in 
hand. To whom shall the community look for the 
maintenance of a tone of intelligence and cultivation, 
if not to her professional men, whose lives have been 
set apart for the pursuit of useful knowledge, and 
whose daily occupations bring them largely in con- 
tact with the world? Who can so well help forward 
every good work as he, whose acquaintance is most 
extensive, and who knows most intimately the wants 
of society 7 

The physician has the opportunity to become a 
wise and an accomplished man, and he must be espe- 
cially wanting to himself if he do not become a good 
man. His daily employment is a school of benevo- 
lence, and the best means of augmenting the vir- 



ORATION. 23 

tues is their constant exercise. Those of you whose 
tastes have led you to prefer this calling, have chosen 
a good part, an occupation which will never suffer 
the mind to stagnate, nor the heart to grow cold, and 
which, with all its fatigues and privations, fills up 
life as pleasantly perhaps as any other employment. 
You yourselves have lived long enough to have felt 
the healing and comforting influence of the presence 
of the good physician ; you have seen him moving in 
society the solace of the suffering, the counsellor of 
the ignorant, the mediator of peace, the delight of 
friendship, and the ornament of the social circle. 
And you have said to yourself, that with such a com- 
panion you would choose to walk the pilgrimage of 
life, and with him at your side to encounter the onset 
of the last dread enemy, from whose grasp no human 
arm can deliver. The idea of the good physician 
rises up clear and vivid to your mental eye. Go forth, 
and realize it in your future career. 

It remains that I say something of the position 
and duties of the clerical profession in this country. 
Circumstances have thrown into the hands of the 
religious teachers of these United States an intellec- 
tual and moral influence, wliich transcends all esti- 
mate. There are annually delivered in this country 
not less than a million of religious discourses, listened 
to in a greater or less extent, by the whole popula- 



24 ORATION. 

tioiij — ranging over the whole surface of speculation 
and life, embracing almost every topic of morals, meta- 
physics and devotion, touching almost every point of 
abstract opinion and social duty. Other influences are 
occasional and interrupted, they operate with great- 
er or less intensity with the various vicissitudes of 
human aflfairs. But here is a subject, more vital and 
commanding than any other, periodically and inevi- 
tably brought before the mind by the stillness of the 
Sabbath and the suspension of the common occupa- 
tions of life. That stillness, reigning over all, sus- 
pending alike the hum of the city and the labors of 
the field, stretching from sea to mountain, over valley 
and hill, itself pays a silent homage to the subject 
which the ministers of religion go to the house of God 
to discuss. No speaker addresses the public under 
so many advantages. The multitudes of the Chris- 
tian world resort to their public altars with minds 
prepared, and hearts laid open to receive the deepest 
impressions and the best of influences. There are 
their neighbors, with whom ihey have passed through 
the lights and shadows which fall upon the pilgrim- 
age of life, viewed for a time not in the cold and 
worldly relations of business or interest, but as be- 
longing to the great brotherhood of humanity, sharers 
in all that is best and noblest in our nature, and heirs 
together of the same immortal hope. There are their 



ORATION. 25 

children in their beautiful prime, their present solace 
and their future stay, in whom they have already 
learned to live almost as much as in themselves. 
There the minister stands up as the organ of their 
communion with heaven, awakening by appropriate 
expression their reverence, their gratitude, their peni- 
tence, their confidence, their aspirations after a bet- 
ter life. There he speaks to them, not in the feeble 
tones of human genius, but in the divine and soul 
elevating inspiration of the Psalms. He addresses 
to them not the ftillible counsels of human pru- 
dence, but the awful warnings of prophecy, in lan- 
guage taught by the Holy Ghost. He discourses 
not of the philosophies of man's invention, which are 
fading, or are destined to fade from human belief, but 
of the word of eternal life, which liveth and abideth 
forever. He stands there, not as the advocate of any 
worldly interest, which partakes of the littleness of 
this diurnal sphere, but as the ambassador of Christ, 
to proclaim to man the offer of pardon and eternal 
happiness, which he sealed on Calvary with his blood. 
What a scope is here given to the best powers 
which God ever bestowed on man, or that man ever 
cultivated and perfected by his own endeavors ! Not 
a lineament of the character of the Saviour, which 
he l*eflects in his own, that does not tell in his weekly 
ministrations, that does not add force to the truths 
4 



26 ORATION. 

which he sends home to the conscience and the heart. 
And while he regards as first and indispensable, true 
and unfeigned piety in himself, there is scarcely an 
accomplishment he can cultivate, which will not 
widen and deepen the influence he exerts in elevat- 
ing the character and condition of man. Even per- 
sonal peculiarities are capable of being consecrated 
to the cause of Christ. The zeal and boldness of 
Peter, fitted him to confront and convince the Jewish 
multitude on the day of Pentecost, while the deep 
and contemplative mind of John adapted him to re- 
ceive, to comprehend, and transmit to all ages the 
profound spiritual truths of the teaching of Jesus. 
And Paul, with his secular as well as Jewish learning 
and eloquence, was a valuable accession to the com- 
pany of the apostles when the Gospel was to be pro- 
claimed and defended before councils and senators, 
kings and emperors. Just so at the present day, 
every individual endowment, and every personal ac- 
quisition may be made to increase the value and 
efficiency of the minister of Christ. Deep learning, 
elegant literature, sound logic, as well as true zeal 
and fervid eloquence, all may be made subservient to 
spread the influence of Christian truth and pure reli- 
gion. The preacher, of all men, should be the last to 
abandon the walks of classical learning, and the gene- 
ral cultivation of the mind. Since the days of mira- 



ORATION. 27 

cles are gone by, the successors of the apostles are 
left with the assisting grace of God to human means, 
to prepare them for their great work. According to 
the apostolic admonition, they must "give them- 
selves to reading," to study, and mental culture. And 
where shall they look for the means of literary ac- 
complishment, if not to those immortal models of 
composition which have commanded the admiration 
of ages, and which as long as man continues to be 
what he now is, will take the deepest hold on the 
human mind and heart ? 

There is another calling, which is fast assuming 
the dignity and importance of a profession, and which 
I should leave the .subject imperfect if I failed to 
notice, and that is the profession of literature. 

The Americans are now the most reading nation 
on earth. There are more newspapers and periodi- 
cals annually issued from the press in this country 
than in all the rest of the world. Where there are 
more readers, there must ultimately be more waiters 
than any where else. Who is to supply the matter 
which is to be impressed on the hundred millions of 
sheets that yearly issue from the press in the United 
States ? Americans, let me tell you, those who thus 
obtain access to the public mind are at this moment 
exerting a greater influence upon the character and 
destiny of our country than any other class, except 



28 ORATION. 

that which ministers at the altars of religion. Will 
these most important stations continue to be filled by 
men from the ordinary pursuits of life, without aca- 
demic education and classical culture, however great 
their natural endowments? By no means. The sharp 
competition of these establishments will gradually 
enlist a higher grade of talent and acquisition in their 
service, talent and acquisition, not which have failed 
in other pursuits, but which could any where command 
success. 

Multitudes, who are now laying the foundation of a 
thorough education at our literary institutions, are 
destined to this sphere of action, and there is scarcely 
any more elevated and enlarged. There are those 
now treading the quiet walks of academic life, who 
are destined before they close their earthly career to 
see the seventeen millions of our population swelled 
to sixty millions, all accessible as one man to the 
voice of truth and eloquence emanating from a single 
mind through the press. 

To the successful author in any department, a 
career of ambition and usefulness is opened in this 
country, such as never entered into the dreams of the 
literary men of other times. America by her prodi- 
gious increase on every side, and England by her 
colonies, her commerce, and her conquests, are spread- 
ing the English language and literature in every part 



ORATION. 29 

of the world. The successful English authors of the 
present age address an audience of which it never 
entered into the imagination of man to conceive. 
Scott and Byron, and Moore and Dickens, are simul- 
taneously read on the banks of the Thames, in the 
valley of the Mississippi, at the mouth of the Oregon 
and on the shores of the Ganges, and scarcely an 
island in the ocean that has not been visited and illu- 
minated by the emanations of British learning and 
genius. America is following in the same bright 
path. Already the voice of her statesmen is heard 
in other lands. The names of her Irvings, her Chan- 
nings, her Bryants and her Coopers, are becoming 
familiar as household words in the mother country. 
Their thoughts too are flying with the wings of wind 
and fire to visit every shore, and are every where 
treasured up to minister wisdom and delight to gene- 
rations yet unborn. 

Some among those whom I now address are des- 
tined, it is to be hoped, to achieve fame and power 
and usefulness by literary pursuits. To minister to 
the wants of the mind is no mean calling in any 
sphere of action, to do so effectually is one of the 
most difficult of attainments. To wield our mother 
tongue with the hand of a master, is not the work of a 
day, a month, or a year, and requires a diligence and 
a perseverance not infei'ior to that which is necessary 



30 ORATION. 

to attain eminence in any profession. It is tiie slow 
result of perpetual practice, combined with the study 
of the best models of composition in all languages 
and of all times. Above all, a familiarity with the 
Greek compels us to explore all the riches of our 
own language to measure its copiousness, its preci- 
sion, its majesty and its force. To moderate the stateli- 
ness of classical composition, a frequent recurrence to 
the early English dramatists will be found the most 
efficacious expedient. Through them the English 
Muse spoke her first, untaught and bewitching accents 
of nature and truth. The combination of these two 
models of composition from ancient and modern 
times, is adding the smile and motion of the Graces 
to the majestic beauty of Minerva; — or rather it is as 
if, at the touch of Jove, the statue of that goddess of 
wisdom were to step from her pedestal, changed from 
her marble stillness to a living form, mantling with 
warm blood, and thrilling with sensibility. 

Gentlemen of the Literary Societies of Marshall 
College, I have given you a few plain and practical 
ideas upon the appropriate education, and the peculiar 
duties and responsibilities of professional men in Ame- 
rica. I have shown you that they occupy a station 
more commanding and influential than any other 
class. On them devolves the power widely to bless, 
to adorn and elevate society, or as widely to wrong. 



ORATION. 31 

corrupt and degrade it. Whatever may be the course 
that others may take, you, I hope, will always be 
found on the side of sound morality, thorough educa- 
tion and pure patriotism ; and in whatever profession 
you may be called to serve your country, I trust that 
you will never forget the academic shades in which 
you have been nurtured, nor lose the conviction that 
you are bound by your early vows, to add the accom- 
plishments of the scholar to the solid virtues of the 
Christian, the citizen and the man. 



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